since Puppy 4.1 finally solved a lot of wlan USB stick problems I had with it before, I gave it another go.
This time my printer caused serious trouble, a Canon i865, aka Pixus i860 (only difference is you can't print CD labels with the i860).
This is a great printer, especially if you want to print high quality black&white photos. Colour's also very good. AND cartridges are not dongled, so it's inexpensive printing.

It does not work out of the box with Puppy 4.1, however. It's always been a bit of a bugger to set up under Linux. (The only really smooth setup I had was with PCL*n*xOS, but that's a slow and stiff system for me).

Here's what I did: I use the Debian packages of this guy from /var/cache/apt of my main Linux distro:

http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/canon-pixus.html

Sadly there is no direct download link available, but if you start any live Debian distro like Kn*pp*x etc., and follow procedures described on these pages, you'll have the following DEBIAN packages:

libcnbj-2.4.deb bjfilter-2.4.deb pstocanonbj.deb.

You unpack these to something like: /root/canoni865, into 3 newly created directories, say /libcnbj, /bjfilter, /pstocanonbj, by clicking on them and giving the about directories as the place to unpack them; they will be created, with the files inside.

Now you convert these directories individually into .tgz files; for this you open a terminal, cd to /root/Canoni865 & type sth. like:

You install them by simply clicking on them; they installed without any problems for me.

Next check if you have any cups or Gutenprint packages installed; if so, DELETE THEM, again by simply clicking on them. I spent hours to get the standard cups version, Gutenprint drivers, etc. to work; the system sees the printer, but it doesn't print, you always get a "permission denied" message from the spooler, no matter what you do to the directories.

You are advised to reboot after installing any library, etc. I did this (not very Linux-like, rebooting after an install?).

After the install the cups browser interface comes up, you install your printer, in the case of the Canon i865 this one:
Canon PIXUS 860i ver.2.4

I was happy to be able to print a testpage. It comes out in superb quality.
Since I was close to giving up, I thought I might save others a bit of time and trouble & post these instructions; please follow them, but of course entirely at your own risk.

Note: You should be able to get the following printers to print in this way, by downloading the relevant packages:

Great! I use Takushi's .deb in my Debian install, but if you look at my thread further down this forum, you can see that Muggins made me a .pet from the original Canon .rpm drivers. This did the trick for me in no time.

One question: do the maintenance gui's work? Both Takushi's .deb on Debian and the Canon .rpm/.pet only print- no diagnostic/ maintenance gui's.

And can you print from Abiword? I've struggled with that, to no avail. On Puppy 3.01 I use Ted, and on 4.0/4.1 I have to use Open Office, which is ******* slow.

I found printing from GIMP 2.2 did not work, but 2.4 does work, but not using Gutenprint. In 2.4 the printer shows up as a choice, and works, but in 2.2 the only option is Gutenprint.

I've never got Abiword to print in Puppy using the .pet- but I did not see a way of using the Takushi version, which does print from Abiword in Debian. Perhaps I'll give your method a try- maybe Takushi improved things!

Don't think there's any fault with the debian packages, have used them for well over 2 years with K*'n*t*x, my main distro, never a problem. I guess it has something to do with running everything as root in Puppy, which Cups doesn't seem to like, so printjobs get stuck somewhere on the way to the spooler; you can see them in /var/spool/cups/..., but you can't change permissions (I chmodded every darned directory down to the stored printjob, just wouldn't print). Seems to be a common problem with cups, and not easy to fix, which you see when you search the web. That still does not explain why some apps print & others don't. But I don't really want to go much deeper into this, my printer prints, bingo!
- Jupp

I've done it on Puppy 4.1, and the great thing is that at last I can print from Abiword- so Mr Takushi did improve on the original Canon drivers.

You need to study Takushi's site, as he provides packages for a number of Canon and (I need to check...) Epson printers. My Canon i965 needed the 2.2 packages, rather than the 2.4 versions used by Joecool.

How I did it:

Boot up my old Debian install- takes over four minutes now that I've upgraded Etch to Lenny. Download, using Aptitude, but do not install, the relevant packages. They get parked in my home directory.

Re-boot into Puppy, and make use of the marvels of Puppy- mount the partition that has Debian in it. Then use Rox-filer ( which has access to all areas, despite Debian's security) to move the three packages to / in Puppy.

Now open a terminal in the / directory by right clicking in the Rox window, selecting "window > terminal here". In the terminal type

dpkg-deb --extract package_name.deb /

The final / is the destination for the unpacked files- none end up here, they go to the right directories. Close the terminal and Rox window.

I found that there is a missing lib file, so I needed to create a symlink to the equivalent one already in Puppy. Open a new terminal, type cd /usr/lib/ <ret>
then

ln -s libtiff.so.3.7.4 libtiff.so.4 <ret>

Close the terminal, reboot to shake it all into place, and go to cups and set up your printer.

This beats the method of installing the Canon drivers that I've used (and written about), since this method allows printing from Abiword.

Congratulations, you've done it. It's basically the same procedure I have described above, only you unpack directly to the relevant directories. Advantage of "my method" (sounds rather presumptious) is you can cleanly uninstall the .pet packages, in case sth goes wrong & messes up your system.
A more general note: It's little things like these which have so far have always led me to giving up on Puppy or other distros at some point, at first it was modems, then wlan usb sticks, then printing. For the first time now it looks like Puppy can be a solid second for me. My first is Kanotix, and will remain so as long as it is maintained. But though that's fast, it can't beat the speed and simplicity of Puppy.
Regards,
- Jupp

PS: If only I could get streamtuner to work somehow now (but that's clearly no fault of Puppy)!

WHOOPS! Hold it! This driver works fine on a local printer, ie one connected directly to the Puppy computer, BUT!

When I tried to set up cups to print to the printer connected via a Windows XP machine, some software called /usr/bin/gsc gets involved, and goes into a loop, gradually bringing the computer to a stop.

Sounds like something ghostscript to me, doesn't Puppy pass on ps/pdf files to cups via ghostscript? I guess that's also where the "permission denied" error kicks in. I have never set up a network printer, but you need Samba for this, don't you? Have you tried the Samba .pet-package from the installer? Only vague guesses, but I'm sure somebody in the forum will help you.
Good luck,
- Jupp

Solved it. The Takushi driver needs /usr/share/ghostscript/8.62, whereas Puppy has 8.15 and symlinks to that from a number of other versions, up to 8.60. So I added a symlink from 8.62 to 8.15, and it (holds fingers crossed) works. So I'll have to go back to earlier versions of Puppy, and see if the same problem has been preventing me from printing from Abiword with the .pet.

Gerry

EDIT: That was a red herring: it coincidentally started working when I made that link, but would no longer work next time I booted the computer.

I'm lost! I just don't understand how I can get printing going, and then suddenly it won't work any more- and I haven't changed anything!

Comparing Puppy 3.01, which does print to my Windows printer, I found that in 4.1.1 (and presumably the other 4* releases) every line in /etc/cups/client.conf is commented out, but in 3.01 this not so. So I edited this file, to make it the same in 4.1.1 as in 3.01, and I can now print to my windows printer. The edit is:

Change the line in the Servername section. Remove the # at the start of the line, and make the line read:

ServerName localhost

I'll edit this post if tomorrow the magic has stopped working, but for the moment IT WORKS.

EDIT: No, it worked this morning, but it doesn't work this evening. It's crazy! I'm getting to the point where I'll have to experiment with things like "Is the screen saver running on the Windows machine?"

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